Atari Jaguar Emu


airbeckley

Still Fresh
Joined
Sep 12, 2008
Messages
47
Hey,

I was wondering what the state of the Jag emu was for Pandora? There was some news and talk a while back but things have gone very quiet since - I was really looking forward to playing Jag on my Pandora...I didn't get the chance back in the day but a number of the games looked really interesting...from what I remember someone (Firefox maybe?) was looking at a an emu built for emulating Tempest specifically that could be adapted (forgive my poor description I am no dev)... :huh:

Anyone know of anything else of any devs shed any light on this?

Thanks.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pe_R787gREc
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I think that only Tempest 2000 was ever shown, this was pre-order time, when several ports were done to showcase the Pandora initially

The port was a done as a simple port from GP2X version I think.

Just imagine how good it would be now if optimized - albeit I own up to having a Jaguar back in the day - it was nice in that you could run off Carts - bad in that nearly 60-80% of games had bugs (lots were released by Atari in a vain attempt to out do Sega and Nintendo at that time.

Due to poor testing they failed and the crazy joypad I remember it having a dialling pad number of keys.

There were some very good games that I liked on it:

Iron Soldier
Raiden
Doom
Rayman
Dragon
Battlemorph (CD)
Space Ace (CD)
Blue Lightning (CD)
World Tour Racing (CD)

Must admit I got the Jaguar believing all the hype that Atari designed it, IBM were mass producing it and this console would rule the earth - pity only a handful of games were playable and often so damn expensive. Compared to my older 800 and 800XL machines the Jaguar was advanced, but it cost.

At the time Nintendo SNES and Sega Megadrives ruled the world. The Jaguar was the most advanced console of its era. With the PSX just being designed for Nintendo at the time.

I quickly changed ship and went onto the Japanese PC-Engine and TurboGraphix consoles before moving on Amiga 1200 and CD32.

You have to step back and think what Atari could have been today had they tested the software and delivered the Jaguar as a CD-Rom before Sony came out with PSX - they stuck to Carts and it killed them as it nearly did with Nintendo and N64, Sega just killed themselves with the bizzarely over-complicated Saturn with its numerous hard to fathom components and then released the Dreamcast which to all intent purposes, Microsoft used as a test the water tool before the X-Box got off the ground
 
'RajTakhar' said:
.....

There were some very good games that I liked on it:

Iron Soldier
Raiden
Doom
Rayman
Dragon
Battlemorph (CD)
Space Ace (CD)
Blue Lightning (CD)
World Tour Racing (CD)

...
Thanks for the info and for the vid too - I don't remember seeing it actually running. Tempest would be great to play as its one of those games I've heard a lot about but never played...

@Raj interesting list - I'm really interested in playing AVP and Iron Soldier...always eyed the Jag ads with envy back in the day... :D
 
Last edited by a moderator:
'RajTakhar' said:
I think that only Tempest 2000 was ever shown, this was pre-order time, when several ports were done to showcase the Pandora initially

The port was a done as a simple port from GP2X version I think.

Just imagine how good it would be now if optimized - albeit I own up to having a Jaguar back in the day - it was nice in that you could run off Carts - bad in that nearly 60-80% of games had bugs (lots were released by Atari in a vain attempt to out do Sega and Nintendo at that time.

Due to poor testing they failed and the crazy joypad I remember it having a dialling pad number of keys.

There were some very good games that I liked on it:

Iron Soldier
Raiden
Doom
Rayman
Dragon
Battlemorph (CD)
Space Ace (CD)
Blue Lightning (CD)
World Tour Racing (CD)

Must admit I got the Jaguar believing all the hype that Atari designed it, IBM were mass producing it and this console would rule the earth - pity only a handful of games were playable and often so damn expensive. Compared to my older 800 and 800XL machines the Jaguar was advanced, but it cost.

At the time Nintendo SNES and Sega Megadrives ruled the world. The Jaguar was the most advanced console of its era. With the PSX just being designed for Nintendo at the time.

I quickly changed ship and went onto the Japanese PC-Engine and TurboGraphix consoles before moving on Amiga 1200 and CD32.

You have to step back and think what Atari could have been today had they tested the software and delivered the Jaguar as a CD-Rom before Sony came out with PSX - they stuck to Carts and it killed them as it nearly did with Nintendo and N64, Sega just killed themselves with the bizzarely over-complicated Saturn with its numerous hard to fathom components and then released the Dreamcast which to all intent purposes, Microsoft used as a test the water tool before the X-Box got off the ground
Just my opinion, but I think if the game industry hadn't gone 3d, the Jaguar could have competed quite well with the offerings of the time. It blew away every other 2d system at the time, even many PC games. For example, Rayman looks great on the Jaguar compared to Rayman for the PC which runs in 256 colors. Even the more "advanced" systems at the time like 3d0 and CD-I paled in comparison. But the move to 3d and the lack of good 3rd party support killed it before it could really get anywhere. I think Atari would have been better off developing good games for the other guys console and not even released the Jaguar. They hadn't had a competitive system since the 2600 in the early 80's. Even the 2600 in the mid/late eighties did better. Another thing, the industry had largely settled on a general controller shape and Atari comes out with a controller that is difficult to hold. They took the "do the math" thing far. It was like "do the math, look at all our buttons.. Count em up!" We got like 49 buttons, they only got 6:). Add up the move to 3d based games and the Jag tanks. But it's a shame, because it's a great 2d system. I don't think there was a single game back then that the Jaguar couldn't have brought home much better than on the Genesis or the Snes. Rayman was absolutely jaw dropping compared to the other games out at the time, even to this day I think it looks great and has awesome touches. The downside is it's hard as shit. Too bad. Glad I wasn't an investor.

The Dreamcast is a mystery to me. I don't know why they stopped producing it. It was a great system and had a great library and could have survived another couple of years while MS and Sony were building their library. Some of Sega's best 3d offerings are on this console. I also didn't see the ps2 or the Xbox as that much better graphically, but then again I am not a 3d gamer. To me they looked pretty much alike. It's kinda like the Saturn vs PSX debate, I've seen side by side pictures of screenshots and they really looked pretty much the same to me, and being first gen, they all like shit. The Dreamcast games had much better graphics and from what I have heard a great library of games. Even when they announced the DC death, I never really heard a good reason why. I think Sega could have easily competed. They competed fine against a technically superior SNES.

Chris
 
Last edited by a moderator:
christo930 said:
The Dreamcast is a mystery to me. I don't know why they stopped producing it.
They made design decisions (mostly involving anti-piracy measurements) which raised the cost of production too high to be profitable.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
That, and they couldn't get enough decent third-party titles to break Sony's and Nintendo's dominance. I still have my Dreamcast, but there just weren't enough quality games on it to make it a successful system. I found the Sonic games to be aimed at an audience that was well below my age level, even then.

Still, you have to give the system some credit. It was ahead of its time in a lot of ways.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I had a Jaguar. Bought it in Philly when I was hella young. 14?

It was Dead on Arrival had to take it back & parentals put a halt on repurchase.

Wasn't bitter & kinda glad knowing about the glitches. Will be nice to give a whirl on the Pandora.

Bought the ticket but the ride didn't work. Bunk

Peace

Link
 
Last edited by a moderator:
christo930 said:
[Jaguar] blew away every other 2d system at the time, even many PC games.
I would like to see an emulator so I can do my own compare and contrast on that. It seems to be more powerful than other systems of the time, but AVGN just put up a fairly scathing review (well, I guess he doesn't really put up any other kind, does he?) at Screwattack which specifically suggested that the 2D visuals were not really substantially superior than what you's see on the 16-bit systems of the time and in some cases were inferior (granted, he compared what was likely an average Jaguar game to pretty much the best-looking 2D game on the Genesis).


christo930 said:
The Dreamcast is a mystery to me. I don't know why they stopped producing it.
Sega seems to have spearheaded the current industry-standard scheme of pricing hardware well below cost that has been adopted by pretty much every console maker whose name isn't Nintendo. Sony and Microsoft are still around because they have incredible cash reserves and other departments that can offset losses in the console space. What was the average price of the Mega Drive (Genesis), Sega's most wildly popular console? $150, I'd guess, over its entire lifespan. Twenty-nine million units would mean about $4.35 billion in total revenue. The *loss* on the Xbox line even offset by profits of games and not counting pre-2002 R&D expenses on the original Xbox is so far $6.37 billion. Similarly, Sony's games division is down $3.18 billion from FY2007 to now, even offset by the still wildly profitable PS2, offset by profitable games, not counting pre-2007 R&D. There's a little bit of apples-to-oranges in my comparison and a bunch of sticky variables (like how Zune is in the same division, I believe, as the Xbox line), but my basic point is that Microsoft and Sony can eat these losses, but Sega *must* make a profit in their gaming division, because it's all they really have (well, that and Pachinko, but sales there are pretty horrible these days), and given this current popular below-cost methodology, Sega's console would have to be incredibly popular if they even want to break even (the Xbox 360 itself is popular enough that it *might* break even, barely, if it's very very lucky).

(in case you're wondering, "http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=3873812", numbers are a couple quarters out of date, though -- since then, I believe Sony is down ~$375m and Microsoft up ~$329m, not enough to really change the gist of the above text)


In a semi-related, more on-topic note, I have the impression that the Pandora isn't really under much of a markup -- if any -- currently, hence the future (if small) planned price increase. Is it safe to assume that the creators will be at or near breakeven after the first shipment is fully sold?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
'christo930' said:
Just my opinion, but I think if the game industry hadn't gone 3d, the Jaguar could have competed quite well with the offerings of the time. It blew away every other 2d system at the time, even many PC games. For example, Rayman looks great on the Jaguar compared to Rayman for the PC which runs in 256 colors. Even the more "advanced" systems at the time like 3d0 and CD-I paled in comparison. But the move to 3d and the lack of good 3rd party support killed it before it could really get anywhere. I think Atari would have been better off developing good games for the other guys console and not even released the Jaguar. They hadn't had a competitive system since the 2600 in the early 80's. Even the 2600 in the mid/late eighties did better. Another thing, the industry had largely settled on a general controller shape and Atari comes out with a controller that is difficult to hold. They took the "do the math" thing far. It was like "do the math, look at all our buttons.. Count em up!" We got like 49 buttons, they only got 6:). Add up the move to 3d based games and the Jag tanks. But it's a shame, because it's a great 2d system. I don't think there was a single game back then that the Jaguar couldn't have brought home much better than on the Genesis or the Snes. Rayman was absolutely jaw dropping compared to the other games out at the time, even to this day I think it looks great and has awesome touches. The downside is it's hard as shit. Too bad. Glad I wasn't an investor.

The Dreamcast is a mystery to me. I don't know why they stopped producing it. It was a great system and had a great library and could have survived another couple of years while MS and Sony were building their library. Some of Sega's best 3d offerings are on this console. I also didn't see the ps2 or the Xbox as that much better graphically, but then again I am not a 3d gamer. To me they looked pretty much alike. It's kinda like the Saturn vs PSX debate, I've seen side by side pictures of screenshots and they really looked pretty much the same to me, and being first gen, they all like shit. The Dreamcast games had much better graphics and from what I have heard a great library of games. Even when they announced the DC death, I never really heard a good reason why. I think Sega could have easily competed. They competed fine against a technically superior SNES.

Chris
lol thats like saying if the games industry hadn't gone 32-bit the Amiga 500 would still be kicking ass!
It's all very good in hindsight and yes we all do it occasionally thinking would could have been...
Anyway the Jag was good at 2D but no better than the Neo-Geo that had been out since 1990 or the Neo-Geo CD that came out at the same time, i also think the 3DO was good at 2D (i.e Super Streetfigher) so the 3DO certainly didnt pale in comparison, and the CD-i was 3 years old time Rayman came out on the Jaguar, hardly an advanced system by that time!
Harsh statement but i dont think Atari EVER recovered from the crash of 83, the ST while good for midi couldn't compete with the Amiga in terms of graphics, sound and proper developer support, esp in the later years getting half assed ports....the Jaguar while advanced at the time came out when people wanted CD's not cartridges (a fact Nintendo would find out with the N64) and the stupidly high prices of games and low publisher support, Atari later just took any old port to make up the game releases, a fact that 15 odd Amiga game ports made the way is indicating of this) the Lynx was good (i did own one about 10 years ago) but again the launch price was £189! yes and in 1989 that needed a 2nd mortgage to buy one! techinally great, but lack of support (same theme here i guess!) , battery usage, size of machine, etc killed the system, well along with the Gameboy that was a more portable size, cheaper games, bigger range etc

Don't get me wrong I'm not an Atari hater, i even bought a Jaguar joypad for £10 shortly after launch with intent to buy one, but got offered a CD32 with Pinball Fantasies for £150 so i took that.
The point is Atari make good games and good hardware but the ideas of marketing them properly have never been there..

The Dreamcast Mystery as you put it wasnt such a mystery if you were a gamer at the time, the hype machine....sorry PS2 with its *cough* amazing emotion engine was coming, people stopped buying and wanted to wait a year or 2 for it, more tech demos that showed stuff even the final model couldnt do were shown all the time, the fact why i have hated Sony since for, Sega were short of money and took the decision to stop...no mystery to it.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Sega had over extended themselves between expensive hardware development for both arcade and console sides of their buisness. Trying to compete with SCE who had no arcades to worry about and was providing perfect arcade recreations in the home, and Nintendo who realized early they didnt need to spend as much on hardware development to create the games they wanted to make, left them spread thin. They had alineated sveral outlets back in the saturn days and some of those bridges were never repaired. They were also funding expensive, but ultimately dying arcades across the world, and eventually all that heavy spending and not making any of the money back was killing them. They had to abandon consols to save the company and that meant becomeing a 3rd party publisher.

that's why they killed the DC. Dont hate Sony for it, Nintendo would have killed tem too, it just would have taken longer... and M$ would have bought them intead of Sammy.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I bought a Jaguar at (or near) launch. Since then, I've amassed almost a complete collection of games (all I'm missing are the two soccer games, Battlesphere, and some of the newer games that Songbird (http://www.songbird-productions.com) has released). I've always liked the system, though it certainly had it's failings.

'jaycee900' said:
Even the more "advanced" systems at the time like 3d0 and CD-I paled in comparison.

Well, 3DO game had a habit of trying to exploit 3D to look better, but this was the dark ages of 3D graphics, so most of the games looked awful, and were very shallow. It's hard to really say whether or not the Jaguar is "better" than the 3DO, since they really took different directions. The 3DO did get Star Control II though, which I still consider one of the best games ever made.

As for the CD-i, it's not even a video game system. It was designed to replace VCR's, and just happened to have enough interactive features that people were able to make games on it... when the whole idea of VCD movies basically tanked in North America, all Philips was left with was the video game and "interactive multimedia" side of things, which is all most people remember. But basically, the CD-i is closer to a DVD player than it is to the Jaguar. One huge advantage that the CD-i had was hardware MPEG decoding (assuming you had the digital video cartridge)... it made all the Laserdisc arcade games like Dragon's Lair a real treat to play on the system (for those of you who are into that kind of game). Other than video though, the hardware is so limited that I'm amazed they managed to make some of the games that they did.

QUOTE
Another thing, the industry had largely settled on a general controller shape and Atari comes out with a controller that is difficult to hold.

I really don't understand the complaints about the controller. It's basically a Genesis controller with a keypad on it. Most games don't even use the keypad, so you can completely ignore it. Those that do use it generally use it for tasks like switching weapons or camera views... which lets you avoid menus or tedious weapon cycling. Any game that made any real use of the keypad included an overlay, so you always knew what button was what (I can't say the same about playing PS2 games, where I'm never sure what all the shoulder buttons are for). Personally, I think it's a great idea, and I've always found that it fits my hands perfectly.

Why is more buttons inherently bad?

QUOTE
They took the "do the math" thing far. It was like "do the math, look at all our buttons.. Count em up!" We got like 49 buttons, they only got 6:)

The "Do The Math" slogan was about the Jaguar being 64-bit. This was a big mistake though. People who didn't understand what "bits" were just thought it was a giant lie, while those who DID understand what Atari was talking about quickly realized that "bits" means absolutely nothing. Both groups quickly found the whole thing stupid. Thankfully, this whole marketing nonsense has mostly disappeared.

One of the biggest problems the Jaguar had was that a lot of it's games were quick and dirty ports of existing Genesis or SNES games, which didn't take any advantage of the extra features the Jaguar had to offer. Even when games used higher colour depth, people either didn't notice or didn't care. People quickly decided that the Jaguar wasn't any more powerful, and passed on it.

'christo930' said:
Anyway the Jag was good at 2D but no better than the Neo-Geo that had been out since 1990 or the Neo-Geo CD that came out at the same time

The Jaguar was capable of higher resolutions, and FAR greater colour depth. The only reason the NeoGeo is any good at 2D is the enormous size of the cartridges. In general, the games don't compress their graphics at all, and every frame of animation is just streamed straight from the cartridge.

The Jaguar really was one of the best 2D consoles at the time, even outdoing the PlayStation in many respects. Of course, when the PSX came out, people stopped caring about 2D, so it didn't really matter much.

QUOTE
Don't get me wrong I'm not an Atari hater, i even bought a Jaguar joypad for £10 shortly after launch with intent to buy one, but got offered a CD32 with Pinball Fantasies for £150 so i took that.

Well, that worked out really well... the CD32 didn't do much better than the Jaguar! Don't get me wrong, I'm a CD32 fan myself, with about 100 games for it (not an easy task, being that I live in North America), but many of them are straight Amiga 500 ports that don't take advantage of the system... in fact, quite an interesting parallel to the Jaguar and it's cheap Genesis/SNES ports.

In any case, I'd recommend people try playing Battlemorph before deciding that the Jaguar is a piece of garbage. Battlemorph really shows off what the Jaguar is capable of doing, and is the best game on the system in my opinion. Hopefully we'll see an emulator with good compatibility and JagCD support so people can actually do this. In any case, some of the games I recommend are:

* Battlemorph (CD) - Great 3D graphics, excellent music, varied objects, and all around fun to play
* Attack of the Mutant Penguins - Good graphics, and very interesting concept. Almost like an early Tower Defence game, but not quite. Only problem is that it lacks any music.
* Tempest 2000 - Most people consider this the best game on the system, and I can't really argue with that... though there are versions of this available for other systems.
* Iron Soldier - The 3D in this game may seen primitive these days, but it was pretty impressive seeing those buildings collapse in a pile of cubes at the time.
* Raiden - Maybe not the best showcase for the system's capabilities, but I still consider this the best home version of Raiden.
* Wolfenstein 3D - I also consider this the best version of Wolf3D for any home system. It has less levels than the 3DO and PC versions, but the graphics are way better, and these days you probably wouldn't have the patience to go through all 60 levels of the original anyways.
* Power Drive Rally - Excellent overhead view rally racing game. Great graphics, and fun physics.
* Syhammer - Interesting game where you fly around in a Blade Runner-esque city. This was an aftermarket release, after the system was dead.
* Evolution: Dino Dudes - I always thought this game was underappreciated. It's a fun Lemmings style puzzle game with excellent, colourful graphics, and catchy music.
* Atari Karts - Unfortunately, this game was rushed to market. If they had held it back a while, it could have been so much more. However, even still it's a fun Mario Kart style game with great graphics. It could really have benefited from more power ups and a battle mode though.
* Pinball Fantasies - This was probably the best pinball game until Fantastic Journey and Timeshock came out, and it's still fun today. I'm not entirely sure, but I think this was given a graphical update over the Amiga version (more colours).
* Missile Command 3D - Three different versions of Missile Command, two of which are in 3D. Very well done, though the main game only has three levels, which is somewhat disappointing.
* Defender 2000 - A great update to Defender. Gameplay stays more or less intact, with all kinds of added features and the usual Jeff Minter flair and craziness.

Two games I really don't recommend are Doom and Alien vs. Predator. The Jaguar version of Doom was probably the best home version at the time (Far better than the SNES, 32X and 3DO versions anyways), but it's missing a lot of features of the PC version, and really seems dated by todays standards. The same thing goes for AVP.... most people will point at it as one of the best games on the system, and while I'd agree, I frankly don't think that newcomers will be at all impressed. The engine is Wolf3D quality, and there are only 4 or 5 different types of enemies. The atmosphere and storyline was really what made this game great, but unless you played it back in the mid-90's, you won't think it's anything special, since everything special about this game is taken for granted in modern games.

--Zero
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Back
Top